Tales of Maj’Eyal is a roguelike RPG, featuring tactical turn-based combat and advanced character building. Play as one of many unique races and classes in the lore-filled world of Eyal, exploring random dungeons, facing challenging battles, and developing characters with your own tailored mix of abilities and powers.

Items modified with talents can now be placed in Items Vault, but will lose their modified properties.

Reload is no longer granted to anyone. You'll still have it if you had it. You still won't use it ever!

Unstoppable is no longer Timeless. Neither is Draconic Will. They both are "other" effects which means that they cannot be stripped or affected.

Exploration mode now allows full respec anywhere. And I do mean FULL respec, with no puny "3/4 points" limitation.

Run/Rest now spots projectiles flying your way (but not your own, so beware!)

Run/Rest also stops if you saw someone for the fraction of time as they escape your field of vision at the end of your turn.

AI now only catches a glimpse of you through stealth, making them look in your general direction, not get a lock-on. This helps a bit.

Detrimental traps now have flat 5% chance to not trigger if you're bad at disarming them.

Dream Altar in a certain caldera no longer can kill you or do anything bad to you.

Waking up from a bad dream makes you lose life over several turns, not instantly.

On that note, Sleep no longer causes you to skip turns, yet you still cannot use anything but instant talents.

You can no longer wield an item by replacing another item that provided necessary requirements for it.

Sandworm Queen will now seek you out tirelessly if you are late to her lunch.

Tooltip now have a significant delay on up/down scrolling. Sidebars in levelup screen, prodigy screen, and birth screen now bounce as tooltips do.

Arcane Destruction (Arcane Blades) now actually scales and is not effectively a 1-point talent.

Shade of Kor'Pul got some cover around it. Now you can retreat when you get frozen! Well, after you get frozen. If you're still alive.

Shield Runes are now material level 2, down from 3.

You are now correctly afflicted with Cursed Aura as long as you have Unnatural Body, without having to be Cursed or Doomed.

Several glove egos have got disarm immunity on them. Keep that grip tight!

Phase Door runes now additionally grant you buffs "on teleport" from your equipment (adding to its own bonuses).

Debuffs to your powers can now not only cancel buffs out, but bring them below your baseline stats.

Rest should wait for air if you're able to catch a breath. It also waits for detrimental effects' durations and item cooldowns.

Summons now count their turns down once per game turn, not their own turn. Bloated oozes are more short-lived now, but no one liked them anyway.

You can now teleport within vaults and out of vaults, just not change your current vault by teleporting.

Lite "damage" now reduces the unlit value of grids with darkness if it can't remove them.

Nerfed Aeryn, buffed Argoniel. Now Argoniel can eventually kill Aeryn if left completely alone.

Elandar no longer ignores irresistible sun since Argoniel no longer has it

The Crystal Focus can now be applied to shields (updates the special_combat fields appropriately).

Out of Phase/Time Shield effect reductions can no longer stack to 100% and stack inverse-multiplicatively (50% + 50% = 75%).

Reduced the number of mental effects the Wintertide Phial will remove.

Penitence cures a more reasonable (fewer) number of diseases.

Cursed Sentry now remembers your weapon choice (which you can alter with a separate talent), the object is automatically picked up, but it's got a power level limitation now. Also it levels up them stats and uses better ammo.

Shop selling now rounds the whole stack price to 1 cent, rather than rounding up each object's price individually to 10 cents. Alchemists gems, no longer as shiny.

“Tales of Maj’Eyal (TOME) seems to be a roguelike that refuses to have the shortcomings that are taken for granted in the genre.”
Dorkadia

“Even within a single class, there’s a lot of depth and tactical nuance to discover.”
Indiestatik

Om dette spillet

Tales of Maj’Eyal is a roguelike RPG, featuring tactical turn-based combat and advanced character building. Play as one of many unique races and classes in the lore-filled world of Eyal, exploring random dungeons, facing challenging battles, and developing characters with your own tailored mix of abilities and powers.
With a modern graphical and customisable interface, intuitive mouse control, streamlined mechanics and deep, challenging combat, online stats and character sheets, Tales of Maj’Eyal offers engaging roguelike gameplay for the 21st century.

Key features:

Focus on randomly generated tactical battles

Rich set of very unique classes

Unlocks & achievements progression

Rich world with its own history which slowly reveal during the game

No consumables, no grinding

Turn based: think before you act!

Simple, easy to use interface

Easy modding support with Workshop integration

Buyers will get all the extra features that normal donators get. You can test for free on te4.org

That was my starting point with ToME(4), aka Tales of Maj'Eyal. I'm not really a fan of the genre, though I am a fan of tactical RPGs. It was only after some interesting comments on another game forum (Grim Dawn, great game, look it up) that I decided to give ToME a try.

Unlike some other rogue-likes, ToME gives you the option to play softcore. There are varying difficulty levels in addition to different degrees of 'rogue-like-ness' (multiple lives; from 1 to infinite). The classes vary from basic and simple (Bulwark, Rogue, Archmage, etc) to surprisingly unique (Mindslayer, Oozemancer, Solipsist, etc). The unlock system can be a pain, but it does encourage you to progress through the game, explore and play various archetypes.

The lore is great; the world has been excellently crafted (imo). While it doesn't read like a AAA novel, the depth of the backstory is pretty astonishing considering it's been done primarily by one man (props Darkgod).

When it comes to the gameplay, everything is surprisingly newbie-friendly (for a rogue-like). The UI is simple and easy, the controls are variable (keyboard and/or mouse, re-bindable) and the overly-complex item usage often found in the genre has been notably streamlined.

The graphics are solid. Now, take that with a grain of salt; this is a 2d game of tiles and sprites. If you're anticipating something like Dragon Age, you're going to be disappointed. I know that I was unpleasantly surprised. That being said, it has definitely grown on me and it certainly gives enough information on what's happening.

All that being said, this IS a roguelike. You WILL walk around a corner/open a door/open a chest and get exploded. Careful, cautious play is highly encouraged.

Overall, if you find yourself wanting to try out a roguelike but finding they are a little too 'hardcore' for you, give ToME a try. It's the only roguelike that I have found myself returning to, time after time.

That game can be described in one word: amazing.I mean, beside being such a complex game created and maintained by one dev, it has dozen of features and things that make it even better:- Humor. Dialogues, story, everything is filled with dark, hidden, or obvious humor. Even the achievements have sometimes the best names I've ever seen ("I cleared the room of death and all I got was this lousy achievement!")- Death. You can probably die a thousand times differently. - Death (again). You can choose to have an amount of lives to spend, or you can go in full Roguelike-Permadeath-Nightmare/Madness difficulty, but in that game, you will die a lot, that's for sure.- Network. No multiplayer, but just a global chat, that also let you know when another payer achieves something, or DIES. So you know you're not alone.- MOD THAT GAME TO DEATH- You have so many classes and races to play as and to combine in the vanilla, you probably won't even know what to play anymore after you modded the game to death. There is probably a character-mod for every single creature in the game. There is even a mod that allows you to play as a TREE.- B*tch, I'm a Mega Turtle Storm Knight- The story is a big part of the game. TomE isn't a simple randomly-generated-try-or-die-exploring-maze Roguelike. It has continents, locations, races, people, events of the past, yeah, a story.- B*tch, I'm a Star Elf Paradox Mage- There are so many items, you don't know if it's possible to have something balanced in that. And a lot of the items have a story, and special abilities. Also, you're not limited, in terms of what you wanna wear. Wanna be a human mage that shoots fire with his sword ? Go ahead.- B*tch, I'm a Dwarf Arcane Gladiator

Good roguelike, technically an evolution of the old Tales of Middle Earth Angband variant but you won't notice unless you've played the old ToME. It's quite forgiving for the genre. It's not nearly as spoiler-heavy as Nethack or ADOM, and while it doesn't have the same "transparency" as Dungeon Crawl, it tends to be a little easier. There is a multiple-life "adventure" mode which can be turned off. There are essentially no consumables in the game; the roles typically filled by these are instead unlimited-use abilities subject to cooldowns after use.

One interesting feature is that if you log in to play, there is an in-game chatroom. The online population rarely reaches above 200, so the chatroom isn't actually too cluttered. I have frequently seen developers online answering questions/taking bug reports.

This game is available for free on the developer's website, but there is one class and a few other minor features that are only available in the paid version.

Tales of Maj'Eyal (TOME) is a viciously addictive roguelike adventure which contains a number of key features that both improve the gaming experience overall and crucially distances itself from other run-of-the-mill roguelikes. It is 2D and turn based, preferring gameplay and depth over graphical wizardry.

One important distinction between TOME and other roguelikes is the lack of emphasis on procedural generation. TOME actually has a plot, one that spans continents and the void between worlds, a story of darkness, magic and of course world domination. Throughout each playthrough, the story is the same, albeit with some slight alterations/additions depending on the actions you take and the starting class you select. There is a world map, and the major story locations do not change. Although the layout of each dungeon is procedurally generated, this is not empasised as a selling point of the game - it is merely a tool used to highlight the other qualities this game possesses. And boy are there a lot of qualities.

First and foremost - the character classes. Good luck finding a more comprehensive, deep and exciting set of classes in any other roguelike, or any other GAME for that matter. TOME has over 15 of these, ranging from the stalwart Bulwark to the insidious Shadowblade to the righteous Sun Paladin, TOME has you covered for any kind of playstyle you wish to try. Each class then has a vast array of talent branches to follow, and the branches you choose to develop will essentially create a subset of the class you have chosen. The customisation possibilities are massive, resulting in a lot of replayability and tactical flexibility.

Combat is a highly tactical turn based affair, with a strong emphasis on positioning, cooldowns, and your innate knowledge of your own abilities versus your opponent's. Once within your view, every enemy you encounter can be right-clicked on to view their statistics, abilities (passive and active) and resistances. There are no consumables in TOME. The use of each of your skills and items works on a cooldown system, and managing these cooldowns effectively will make the difference between you slaying a boss or becoming a small stain on a tower floor.

And believe me, the latter will happen far more often than the former if you're not prepared, because TOME is HARD. Hard as in one-hit-kill hard. Hard as in the game gives you 3 options - Rogulike (1 life), Adventure (gain lives as you level up) and Exploration (infinite lives) - and taking the Roguelike option early on will result in tears. Hard as in some of the more powerful enemies in the game are comprised of two separate random character classes, and God help you if you face one with two even remotely synergistic classes under its belt.

And to be honest, if there's one thing that drives me nuts about TOME, it is the difficulty. No doubt this makes me a console casual, but I'm serious. The difficulty of TOME is not embedded within the general gameplay, such as a game like Dark Souls, but rather in its frightening inconsistency of enemy threat. The existence of enemies with randomly combined abilities, together with the fact that there are over 10 different damage types (Fire Cold Darkness Light Mind Temporal Blight Nature bleh) means that at some point (normally after you've spent 10 minutes breezing through a horde of useless trash mobs) you will suddenly bump into a Godlike terror that sends you screaming into the abyss of death with a single, sloppy blink, simply due to having the perfect storm of resistances, abilities and relative level that results in a big tick in the Rekt column. Despite my affection for this wonderful, deep and mechanically interesting game, it is also by far the game I have rage-quitted the most.

TL:DR Version....

Good - Excellent character classes, tactical combat and involving storyline.

Bad - Insane difficulty spikes

Overall - if you enjoy a good tough roguelike, you should already have this game!

Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME4) is a fantastic take on the modern rogue-like. The developer made smart design choices like getting rid of unnessary potions and hunger mechanics . This really helps to streamline the rogue-like genre. Tack on it's intricate class and character progression systems and you've got a unique and fun game that keeps you coming back for more.

A pretty good rogue. It's not about graphics but the gameplay obviously. What really works for me personally about the game is that it is effectively one long endurance battle(I've been a long distance runner for many years and it's a similar mentality). It's randomized, progression is inevitable(both in your character, and forced upon you), you can choose a number of ways to fight between the various classes, etc. but again you must always be alert in order to succeed. Or you lose everything.

I enjoy not feeling completely alone in this game.... because it has a chat. Sure, it's most obvious use is for help questions, but it's much more like dark souls in that you see people dying, world events occurring, and what forms is a sense of unity in the community despite everyone being alone on their own journey.

The game is free from the website, but why not buy it for the cheap price anyway?Fun to play when you need something casual, too.

[posted this initially on the 3rd but reviews were broken at that time.]

I'll start this by telling you that I've been playing TOME since it was Tales of Middle Earth. That's right, originally it was based on Tolkien's work and was an offshoot of a long lineage of games directly related to Rogue, via Moria and then Angband. There was a middle variant in there at some point called Pernband.

Some back story:At some point DarkGod (the main dev) decided to rewrite the client because the old angband client was full of spaghetti code and it became untenable. So came t-engine. Tome was then written as a module of T-engine (all made by DarkGod for no $$ I might add.)

In Tome 3 there were Jedi!!! and other fun ideas but it was chaotic. Tome 3 was a mess, (Tome 4 was much cleaner.) But it was still pretty opaque as Roguelikes go. I would tinker with it, have fun with lost souls etc and then get bored. So I went the way of many players got involved in other games only came back periodically when I got a yen for playing with Lightsabers again. At some point, I noticed Tome 4 was progressing and downloaded and everything was different.

Gone were most of the touches of the Angband and Tolkien worlds. You can still see a few here and there but TOME had become Tales Of Maj Eyal with an original story and a total reworking of the graphics and mechanics. On and off Ive done some beta testing (though my forums account from then was deleted more than once so I guess being inactive on the forums is a good way to get culled.)

At some point I managed a couple of end games. I won once and once I sacrificed my guy (I still don't know why that doesn't count as a win...)

Every time I came back more and more stuff was added and then I saw that they had finally made the leap to Steam. I wanted to buy it immediately because I believe in the game and the devs and why not support them? But I was reticent with all the other games I have and also had to wait for money to pay for it anyway.

I probably should not have waited but I did and when I did finally get the steam version I was not disappointed with either the basic game or the DLC (which I had no previous knowledge of.)

Divergent note that tangentially relates to this review: Bob Dylan has said on songwriting that if you can't change a song, if you can't mess with the words or change the arrangements it is dead and you should bury it. That is a paraphrase because I don't have the exact quote on hand. But this is how I feel about games. TOME is a living game, always changing.

Many pay to play games are not. They merely make some stuff they took out initially available for DLCs when the wells run dry. TOME is not like those games. TOME is developed by a caring group of dedicated players and programmers who are making an epic play experience.

Yes epic. You have a ton of races and classes which unlock as you play. Sometimes the unlock is just something you were going to do anyway but sometimes in true RPG fashion you have to investigate and figure out some puzzle or quest to get the unlock you want. And you can unlock them in something like 9 different modes. The game offers 50 levels of experience in whatever build combo you choose. As you learn more about classes and races you find yourself getting deeper into the decision making process and you realize you have many more choices than you will quickly be able to play with. This could take a long time. As is without any further changes. And the game changes from game to game so you may not always get an event or area you thought you might. And different play styles create vastly different approaches and in-game storylines.

There was a lot of discussion when Maj'Eyal became the world of the game about how terribly difficult the game was (is) so now there are multiple modes for discovering the game. The most rewarding depends on your personality and proclivities as a gamer. You can play with Easy and Exploration and virtually never risk death, or you can unlock, insanity and madness modes and play only in true Roguelike fashion (1 life, though there are items you can find to hedge that bet.) Or you could play as I do on Normal with Adventurous. To each player their own. This is an innovation I wish more devs would think about. Multiple play modes for multiple types of players means more fun for everyone.

The game has a few pit falls. It is deep so it is not hard to get into trouble if you are tired, hungry or bored. Don't do that. Play when you are fresh and excited and keep it that way. You won't complete it in a day. (The main quest line takes a minimum of 10 hours I think if you skip everything else and I highly recomend you don't do that.)

You may also find that the game lore is hard to penetrate. This is partially due to writing style and partially because who wants to read so much of it? Yes you should read the lore the first time you encounter it at the very least. You may or may not glean valuable clues from it but if you need to you can go back to it later. Once you have unlocked certain features you will be able to access ALL of the lore you've ever seen as a player.

You may notice that I am not giving a lot of specifics here because part of the fun of this game is playing it unspoiled. You can of course look stuff up or ask for spoilers if you aren't into all that.

I will say the sound effects while fairly professional are not my cup of tea. I am not really a game sounds kind of player though. I typically turn sound off in games I play and I only checked them out in TOME out of curiousity. You might find them entertaining. Apparently, also there is music. Something I didn't check out. (I am an older guy with a very staid taste in music. If it isn't Classic Rock. Folk, Blues or Soul from the 60s-70s then it probably isn't on my mp3 player. Though I do enjoy more varied styles, when I am gaming that's mainly what I listen to.)

I write all this mainly to enthuse about how much I am enjoying playing TOME again and want you to know it is worth every penny to buy it on steam. The community addons alone make the game extremely customizable.

A very traditional hard-as-balls roguelike. What sets this apart from other genrecompetitors like DCSS or nethack is the very accessible interface and overall decent presentation with a very good default tileset (that can be swapped out, if you feel like it).

Make no mistake, I have barely scratched the surface of what this game holds. But there is an insame amount of stuff in this, half a dozen races, several "sub"races, classes with subclasses and almost all of them come with a unique opening. Very impressive stuff. And everytime I die, even if its in the early stages due to some unfair RNG, I still keep rerolling thanks to the massive amounts of content, every run is different and you will always find another titbit of lore or a new quest.

Its hard to not miss the references to other fantasy worlds. This used to be set in the Tolkien universe, but for the sake of it being a commercial product, all of the connections had to be removed. Still it holds an interesting world with unique characters and well-written lore.

If you're into roguelikes, ToME is almost a mustplay. It takes a lot of time to get used to its "rogueiness" and I recommend changing some of the horrible default keybindings, but once you get out of that beginnerslump, you don't want to stop playing.

With over 1350, this certainly is the game with the most achievements I've ever played.

it feels a little clunky. I dont like the dungeon layouts very much. but... wow this is like od school ultima meets nethack. Like moria taken to an extreme.

The play is mostly geared aournd chacter progresion.

the combat feels very lopsided. things are generally really easy to kill or extremely deadly. i do not like that much. id prefer a little less variance in the monster toughness.

game play is a bit repetive but that is kind of expected.

there is a lot of class content. items are very diablo or mmo like. lots of magic very little is useful.

charcter classes have pretty different play syles. more classes unlock as the game world is explored.

overall its not a bad game. a little bit of a learning curve but it wasnt a painful one really. but i have beaten nethack so... casual gamer may not get it.

its pretty well done though. if you like the old school feel and can overlook the dungeon layouts and have some patience to learn the game... it will surely entertain for a long time. if only off and on.

The only things I can say about this game is "This!" and proceed to rub it into your face if you even mutter the term "roguelike" and go as far as to say that this game is "too cheap for it's content". I may not be able to be a monthly donator, but hot digidy am I going to buy every single expansion as soon as they pop up.

Tales of Maj'Eyal is - albeit a tiny bit linear - a sub-randomly-generated roguelike adventure that relies more on tactics and availible active skills than any other roguelike game I've played this far (if we don't take keyboard-mashing MMOs such as WoW, EVE and others).

The character progression offers vast customization and has decent impact on your playing style, and that's if you only take one single class into consideration, and there are maaaany various classes (which you have to unlock by playing out certain in-game events such as defeating bosses, gathering lore, completing sidequests or just as rewards for progression). The fact that you have so many options in such a (relatively) linear roguelike gives plenty of replayability, an I'm not even talking about unlockable difficulties and mods that add more challenge, randomness and options. Yes, this game has many, many mods.

If you like roguelikes, difficult games in general and good character progression, get this game!

As everyone else is saying, this is probably one of the most elaborate games of its kind out there. And with the astonishingly reasonable price, I'd say you should surely pick it up. If this is your type of game, of course. I could easily see an individual putting several hundreds, or possibly even more hours into this game.

I hate roguelikes. I like difficult games but roguelikes are the antithesis of fun to me. I hate losing my progress, I hate not being able to save scum, I hate dying and losing the feeling of satisfaction just when my character is starting to get somewhere. That being said, I am in love with Tales of Maj'Eyal. It's (shockingly) a roguelike turn-based RPG with varying levels of roguelikeness. For example, when I die - and I die a lot - I choose to start over at level 1 with the same character rather than make an entirely new one every time.

At first glance it looks like some college kid's freshman project, but the UI is clean and has all the information you need without seeming overwhelming. The writing is often hilarious and the lore is deep and engaging. Character sheets, stats, and numbers make me gibber and hyperventilate, so if that's your thing prepare to pore over your character until your eyes bleed. The world has a surprising amount of depth with many races and political/social dynamics between them. At 7 bucks it's really a no-brainer if you like RPGs or turn-based combat; it's definitely one of the best games I'd played in the genre.